Ophelia’s Awakening, 2024

Selma Selman, Ophelia’s Awakening, 2024; Oil on metal; 46 cm ø 40 cm

In 2014, the artist began using scrap metal to produce objects, which oscillate between paintings and sculptures. Dents, stains, and scratches evoke the material’s history and past life. Selman appropriates a medium that has surrounded her since childhood: for generations, the scrap metal trade has been her family’s main livelihood.

Selman’s painting on metal alters the objects; at her hands, former scrap metal is transformed into art – often with art historical references embued in them. Her origins–Selman identifies as having a Roma background–are ever present, providing the “material” with which she inscribes herself into the exclusive canon of art history. Traditionally, this has mainly represented dominant social groups and, for quite a long time, neglected artists such as her in art historiography. Her practice is accordingly characterized by an activist, emancipatory, and avowedly feminist attitude.